Yawning before she can open to the first page of Glass Houses, the new book she downloaded the night before, Sabrina gives up and closes her Tab. Already familiar with the author’s mesmerizing writing style, she knows the successive yawns that have overtaken her are hardly portent to the reading material. Sparing the fellow commuter sitting directly across from being able to count her fillings even from that distance should she allow free rein to pandiculation, she presses her lips tightly together stifling yet another yawn. Dear sweet Insomnia, the sonavabitch, in its perverse sense of humor, takes the sleep she was denied in the dead of night when it was needed and uses the rhythmic movements of the subway train to bring it to her in the morning light of her commute to work.

Glancing at the time piece on her wrist as an afterthought, she muses why she even bothers wearing a watch anymore as she checks the time on her cell phone anyway, 06:47am. There is still a solid forty-five minutes or so of her ride to work, barring the expected unexpected delays inherit to morning rush hour. Knowing a losing battle when she feels it, she stores the Tab in her handbag, and like the true City commuter she is, she then zips it and wraps the straps around her wrists for safe keeping before pulling her sunglasses over her eyes and gives in to slumber.

Taking a late breakfast break nearly four hours later, she sits at her desk, her second extra-large coffee of the morning well in hand, curious antici-pation, not letting her wait until the evening commute to begin reading the book. She opens the reader on her PC figuring she can get at least the first chapter in as she takes a bite of the bacon, eggs and cheese on a toasted bialy. The cheese oh so perfectly warm and gooey as she likes it suddenly feeling repulsively mucoid as she reads the opening sentence:

NED POWELL AWOKE FRIDAY morning at eight and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, rolling a viscous, snot-like clump between his fingers like it was putty.